Ricoh Introduces Mobile Printing App for Blackberry Smartphones

Ricoh introduces an application for RIM's BlackBerry smartphones which allows to employ mobile printing, as well as rolling out a reporting function that helps businesses keep track of paper consumption and energy concerns.

Ricoh Americas Corporation, a provider of digital office equipment
and document management solutions and services, announced the launch of
the Ricoh HotSpot Printing application for BlackBerry smartphones. With
this app, users will have a print option inside their BlackBerry e-mail
client allowing the ability to search for and print to publicly
available Ricoh HotSpot-enabled printers powered by PrinterOn.
Ricoh HotSpot printers allow the forwarding of documents via e-mail or
upload from a URL to a HotSpot printing device. There are no drivers to
download. Users just need a Web-enabled laptop or smartphone to print
to a Ricoh HotSpot printer. The company said enhancements to the Ricoh
HotSpot technology would come later this year with the availability of
HotSpot functionality for MFPs (multifunction products).

"Business professionals never travel without their BlackBerry
smartphones. Having the added convenience and functionality of the
Ricoh HotSpot printer app for BlackBerry smartphones, puts printing
right at their fingertips," said Matt Sakauchi, vice president of
Ricoh's office printer business group.

The company also introduced @Remote Green Reports, the latest
enhancement to Ricoh's @Remote Product Suite. @Remote Green Reports
allow businesses to monitor, assess and report imaging fleet
performance and employee printing trends in support of internal
sustainability and/or cost reduction goals. With @Remote Green Reports,
users can track month-to-month trends in energy and paper consumption
of their Managed Ricoh @Remote Compatible document output devices,
allowing them to monitor fleet performance and the possible
environmental impact device usage operations have on such areas as CO2
emissions or conservation of forests.
This tool collects data from Ricoh networked MFPs and transmits the information to a Ricoh data center. The data
is then processed into green reports that are made available to users
via a password-protected Website. The tool also calculates and trends
approximate CO2 emissions, paper and power consumption, as well as
tracks approximate device paper and utility costs, for month-to-month
comparison. Reports can be customized with local data to estimate more
accurately what the business saves on paper and device utility costs.
Additional graphs and charts aid in tracking environmental performance
of the fleet over time.
"@Remote Green Reports are a key enhancement to Ricoh's Total Green
Office Solution - our approach to helping customers personalize their
document management solutions for the goal of reducing their
environmental impact," said Shun Sato, senior vice president of Ricoh
Americas corporate marketing. "The ability to manage resources
efficiently - balancing environmental responsibility with productivity
- is essential to organizations today. With @Remote Green Reports,
decisions and policies on energy and paper reduction can be made based
on actual usage trends, and not mere speculation."

Nathan Eddy is Associate Editor, Midmarket, at eWEEK.com. Before joining eWEEK.com, Nate was a writer with ChannelWeb and he served as an editor at FierceMarkets. He is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.